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Friday, March 23, 2012

Easy Felt Roses Tutorial (with Video!)

I never get tired of roses! (I have at least 21 tattooed on my body--I can never quite count them correctly.) The ones here are made from wool felt and I plan on making buckets full of them. They're great as a bouquet on your tabletop, but they're also fantastic for hair clips, brooches, sashes, etc.

I came up with my technique after reading this lovely paper roses tutorial. One day while working on my millinery class homework on the train (of all places), I realized that the process could be applied beautifully to felt-like fabrics, if they were stitched in place by hand. A tilted retro hat was born.

I became a little obsessed, and starting making roses out of a wool felt remnant I had on hand. (I'm using this lovely felt from Purl in the video below.)

To make one rose, here's what you'll need:

a 2 x 32" strip of wool felt (you can play around with longer or shorter lengths for different effects)

all purpose sewing thread

a long hand sewing needle

green florist's stems (optional, use these to make a rose to put in a vase) Note: I used a small-gauge wire for this, but I would recommend looking for something like a 20 or 18 gauge to support the weight of the felt rose.

Now's the part where I demo the technique. Please forgive the casual outfit; I got really excited about this and didn't have time to change out of my Pee-Wee Herman t-shirt or touch up my makeup.

I hope this is useful to you, my dear sewing friends. Let me know if you have questions!

48 comments:

Great tutorial! I suffer from really bad allergies in the summer and so we can't have flowers in the house. The fake flowers I have seen in the UK are so tacky looking, I'm gonna give this a go and hopefully be able to have a house full of pretty allergy free blooms this year.

Enjoyed the tutorial Gertie - you're so generous with your knowledge!I once tried making silk flowers and got into bit of a tangle. I think felt might be easier to work with so might try it (if I can buy some felt.)

My husband brought me a beautiful blue and white vase for our 9th Anniversary from a local artist. It would be nice to use it more often. I will try this too. If it works out, it would be fun to have 3 or 4 different colors of bouquets to change once in a while.